“In order to please a selfish politician, Lincoln had signed an order transferring certain regiments. Stanton not only refused to carry out Lincoln’s orders but swore that Lincoln was a damn fool for ever signing such orders. What happened? When Lincoln was told what Stanton had said, Lincoln calmly replied: ‘If Stanton said I was a damned fool then I must be, for he is nearly always right. I’ll just step over and see for myself.’ Lincoln did go to see Stanton. Stanton convinced him that the order was wrong, and Lincoln withdrew it. ”

Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“If it’s all the same to history, it need not repeat itself any more.”

“Bob Edwards Calgary Eye Opener May 31, 1919” quoted in Ottawa Citizen September 30, 1998

In my latest National Post column I say David Suzuki’s thinly veiled threat of violence if he and his sanctimonious ilk don’t get their way, in defiance of lawful authority and popular consent, reflects a persistent mentality on the left.

The German ambassador to Austria-Hungary, Baron von Tschirschky “was not much liked in Vienna: he was a stiff north German of the sort who agreed with Bismarck that ‘the Bavarian is a cross between the Austrian and homo sapiens’.”

Norman Stone “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Survives Sarajevo” in Andrew Roberts, ed., What Might Have Been

“As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation.”

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“‘Look there, a garden!’ said my college friend,/ The Tory member’s elder son, ‘and there!/ God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,/ And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,/ A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled--/ Some sense of duty, something of a faith,/ Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,/ Some patient force to change them when we will,/ Some civic manhood firm against the crowd--/ But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,/ The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,/ The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,/ The little boys begin to shoot and stab,/ A kingdom topples over with a shriek/ Like an old woman, and down rolls the world/ In mock heroics stranger than our own;/ Revolts, republics, revolutions, most/ No graver than a schoolboys’ barring out;/ Too comic for the serious things they are,/ Too solemn for the comic touches in them,/ Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream/ As some of theirs--God bless the narrow seas!/ I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.’”

Alfred Lord Tennyson “The Princess: Conclusion” in Alfred Tennyson: The Major Works

In my latest Epoch Times column I call the failure of the latest giant trendy COP 26 climate conference evidence of what happens when people who don’t grasp the existence of practical difficulties run into them anyway.

“The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort.”

C.S. Lewis “Christian Apologetics” in The Grand Miracle